want to attend, but we have allies in europe that are worth cultivating. >> paul: that's it for this week's edition of the journal editorial report. thanks to my panel and you for watching, i'm paul gigot, we hope to see you right here next week. . >> jon: on fox news watch, president obama enleashes a new offense or is it defense. >> if everybody turned off your cnn, your fox, your, you know, just turn off the tv, msnbc. >> jon: can they afford to mess the coverage? and undercover journalist gets busted in new orleans and without the facts, the liberal media takes their swipes. >> you guys slandered him. >> jon: the policy of don't ask, don't tell over gays in our armed forces gets a full military review, but has the press done a fair job at presenting both sides? news of a possible terror attempt gets an attention and the underwear bomber reveals important details where to find

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the terrorists. or did he? is the press pushing for the answer? >> the nominees are. >> jon: oscar contenders are announced for the year's best films, but when it comes to favorite picks have the mainstream media played a starring role? and the white house has a new way of side stepping the press. >> now there's an efforts. >> jon: on the panel, fox news kirsten pores, jim pinkerton fellow new american foundation and news day columnist elliss h henken, i'm jon scott, fox news watch. >> if everybody here turned off your cnn, your fox, just turned off the tv. msnbc, blogs, and just go talk to folks out there instead of being in this echo chamber where

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the topic is constantly politics. >> jon: the president there telling senate democrats to ignore tv news coverages of the issues facing them in washington. this advice from a president who in just this last week appeared at events up and down the east coast, including a special youtube interview. he also attended the national prayer breakfast, his every step and statement covered by the press, especially cable news and q & a session with house republicans last week was planned at catnip for the press and that it worked. i guess, jim, the question is does the president expect people to turn off cable tv except when he's on? >> i think that's the plan, exactly. so the democrats won't pay attention to polls and just do what he tells them to. look, i think president obama, more than any politician in america today, proves the power of television, as you use it to your advantage as you can. i think, frankly, that he did extremely well in that debate with the house republicans last week, i have no doubt that he'll

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be doing more of that in the future. it goes back to something that richard nixon did in the '60s, man in the arena. it was, if you could handle those kind of q's and a's and handle them well you should be doing more of it and he will. >> jon: cal, you were at the national prayer breakfast with the president on what was it tuesday. >> thursday. >> jon: thursday. he does seem to be going on the offensive with the press, would you say? >> well, he is, but the presidency is like a woman's virtue, if it's spread around too much it loses its value. i'm not looking at you (laughter) >> he's on too much, that's his problem. he's engaging in overkill and he wants people to turn off the cable news networks, especially this one. he threw in msnbc as an afterthought. nobody watches that now anyway and i don't know how much impact that's going to be. because he doesn't want the other point of view challenging his positions. >> jon: too much president obama, elliss. >> apparently not, it serves him

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well and people want to look at the guy and numbers are still big. jon, i understand and i have a little bit of a conflict of interest because i make a big part of my living in cable news and radio. watch 24 hours a day, fine with me, but there's a bubble that some of us fall into who watch and play too much of this stuff. and one of the reasons i try to report from my columns, you actually meet some real people once in a while. >> jon: kirsten, one of the criticism the president has been doing, basically offering an olive branch to republicans and turning around in the next breath and hammering them. is that part of the white house strategy? >> i guess he's trying to have it both ways. the idea that you're not suppose today get information from news sources, go speak to somebody on the street, with respect to the people that you interview, i don't think that's how you should get information and i don't remember obama ever complaining during the campaign about people watching too much msnbc. so, you know, now it's that now

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that people are criticizing him he's saying, oh, don't listen to those people. >> jon: why did he say that, is he trying to pretend he's above the fray? >> blaming the media, a popular strategy. basically saying that these people are just caught up on the inside washington game and i'm not like that, even though he is like that. >> do i have to stand up for street reporting here. thank you for that. >> i think you're right. >> all who just want to talk to the official spokesmen all day? >> no, speak to experts and things and see how the american people are feeling, but i think-- >> real people who are affected by that. don't stay in the bubble all day. >> you get your information from cable news, you just get your information from new york times, just get the information from your column. i think you go to all different news sources, but shouldn't be telling people just to tune ut. >> jon: jim, you said you thought the president did well at that appearance. the republicans after the polls indicated that his approval ratings ticked up, i think 4 points. >> look, it was dramatic television. the rap on obama the last year he can't open his mouth without

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a teleprompter telling him what to say and he proved everybody wrong just then. this was television at its most dramatic, which is a live event. i'm actually part of a group in washington, i guess around the country now, called "demand question time", which is a petition where fair and balanced and david corn to others on the same group, we should be doing this every week just like in britain. >> the president, it was pointed out this week, has done 150 interviews with various reporters and yet hasn't had a live news conference since this summer, why? >> i don't know why. it gets back to what jim was saying. the time with the republicans in baltimore was tremendous, not only good television, but it's what people do. if you live -- if you're in republican and live next door to a democrat you don't throw your window open in the morning and say what are you doing to ruin america today. you get along, accommodate, seek common ground and your kids probably go to school with each

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other. this is his greatest strength, i don't know why he doesn't do it more. >> jon: during the break, hear what we're talking about. and elliss has something to say right now. log on to foxnews.com/fox news watch. we'll be back in two minutes with a look how some in the mainstream media reacted or maybe overreacted to the arrest of a conservative journalist. >> the journalist who exposed scandalous acts at acorn busted in new orleans for his undercover efforts to dig up details on a u.s. senator and giving the liberal media a target on the right. >> you're allowed to tea alleged crime when nobody else about. the academy named oscar hopeful and the mainstream media take their picks. is a liberal media agenda at work? next on news watch. the saw... the saw... that cut the lumber... that built the extra space i needed

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. >> jamie: there's no bugging, there's no wire tapping, no interfering with phones, not only was there no interfering with phones, we never thought about interfering with phones. it never occurred to us, all of that is completely false, a lot of these reporters just flat-out, i think, slandered me immediately off the gun, they jumped the gun on the story and we're still waiting for corrections for dozens of newspapers. >> jon: james o'keefe telling sean hannity how the mean stream

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media in his view got it wrong about his recent arrest. the young journalist who broke the story about acorn stood ready to help him when he claimed that he wanted to set up a prostitution business. well, recently o'keefe was arrested in new orleans, allegedly for attempting to interfere with phones in the office of senator mary landrieu. now, quite a few media outlets including msnbc pounced on the story of his arrest, some framing it as a modern day wa r watergate. one o'keep supporter called on msnbc for a retraction. >> did not use the word wire tap. i should have used the word that the federal prosecutors use willfully and interfering with a telephone operating and control by-- >> are you going to retract. >> are you going to retract. >> and are you going to retract it? are you going to retract it? you retract the wire tap statement. >> sure, i retract i should not used the word wire tap.

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>> msnbc, schuster there. james o'keep's reporting made news, "the washington post" and new york sometimes said they should have done more on that story and yet, when he got arrested in this most recent flap, the times puts him on the front cover along with the other men arrested with him above the fold in the sunday edition. >> you don't think it had anything to do, john, with the politics of it. acorn being a favored liberal group and o'keefe, who outed them for allegedly trying to do the prostitution ring business? this isn't the first time this happened after course, think back to the jennifer flower story which the national enquirer broke on bill clinton. the main street media didn't want to touch it. the new york times eventually forced to put it on the front page. elliss, what about this average, deserved? >> i think it's an interesting story. i started at the albany boast and knickerbocker news.

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>> look how far you've come. >> i've learned lesson there, one there, you don't commit felonies on the way to stories and you don't want to, at the behest of zealous political-- these people don't know that, jim. >> you would say that o'keep committed a felony. >> do you want to retract that. >> he hasn't been convicted if. >> if we waited in the media business until someone was convicted we wouldn't cover khalid shaikh mohammed. >> and elliss, suppose that 60 minutes had gone into a republican senator's office and the republican senator's office had called the cops. >> and the correspondent was arrested. >> and the correspondent was arrested. >> i promise we'd cover it. >> new york times would have been saying this is suppression of free speech by this poor-- >> and not only wearing hard hats and access to telephone boxes. i mean, this is, we'll wait and see what the court case says,

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but from all appearances, it looks like a real news story. i mean, it's something that should be covered and you know, unfortunately, unfortunately, of course, there are lots of stories that don't get covered and unfortunately this is the way it's covered. lots of times it gets covered and then they're exonerated and not covered and not political. it's just people are more interested when people get caught. >> does it seem like a case of the media trying to kill the messenger, messenger who broke the acorn story? >> some media. i don't know if that's what the new york times is doing. certainly there are more left wing publications out to prove this guy is just a tool of right wing funding, he's being funded by right winger, that's a totally separate thing, but i think it's a legitimate news story. >> it's a legitimate news story, the issue is the framing and been 60 minutes doing it or the nation magazine, it would have been heroic journalists being squashed by mean republicans. >> who didn't find out whether the lines, phone lines weren't

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working, some people said they couldn't get through. >> hello, with their own telephone. >> we didn't even get to some of the david schuster tweets. i'm going to talk about that during the break, go to the website for that. if you come across a story that smacks of media bias e-mail us at news watch@foxnews.com. a lot of good nominations for the oscars, is there a force at work for who makes the list. >> the oscars nominations are in, the list is impressive. was it influenced by a liberal leaning media. the attempt to inflict terror is imminent? >> what keeps me awake at night is that al-qaeda and terrorist allies could very well attack the united states. >> does the press show any interest? answers next on news watch. whd

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>> mr. chairman, speaking for myself and myself only, it is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do, no matter how i look at this issue, i cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. >> the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff there, admiral mike mulen calling on congress to reverse the pentagon's 17-year-old policy against gays serving openly in the military. elliss, what about the coverage of, again, something that made the front page, upper right-hand corner of the new york times, the coverage of this particular issue. >> jon, you've put your finger on a couple of interesting issues and the fact we're going to have a vigorous debate about it here illustrates that.

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the country is changing on this issue, the last bastion of officially sanctioned prejudice in this field and it's about to change. >> jon: cal. >> the last bastion are the official are roman catholic and evangelical christian. >> as a roman catholic. >> at least we have agreement. the new york times is a wholly owned subsidiary of the movement. and publisher, day after day there are stories, columns editoria editorials, on the entertainment page, pushing a pro gay rights agenda. that's a fact, an observable, provable fact. >> jon: you disagree. >> i don't see what's wrong with gay rights. the people that people should be afforded certain rights or the opposite the other side of the argument they should be denied rights. that's what they are. i think that it's an absolute legitimate story and i think this is a huge story that if we

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finally are moving in the direction of making don't ask don't tell-- repealing don't ask-don't tell and allowing gays to be in the military openly, a huge story, huge for the military, huge for the country and well overdue. >> jon: doesn't the coverage seem to take a position. >> i think the coverage is overwhelmingly pro this position and overwhelmlyinging-- overwhelmingly pro bill clinton as well. and they got the secretary of defense and joint chiefs on board so the picture in the new york times of gates and mullen talking to each other and supporting this policy just shows that on this issue at least the obamaens knew what they were doing in terms of pushing this issue. >> jon: another hearing on capitol hill made some news this dealing with a prospect of a terror attack on our nation. >> what is the likelihood of another terrorist-attempted attack on the u.s. homeland in the next three to six months,

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high or low? director blair? >> an attempted attack, the priority is certain, i would say. >> mr. panetta. >> i would agree with that. >> mr. muller. >> agreed. >> jon: cia director leon panetta, national intelligence, robert blair and agreeing of an attack in the next months. >> there's a line we have to walk, we want to keep them apprised and report analysis like we just heard, but we need to remind people, don't panic, nobody really knows for sure, it seems likely at some point something will happen, but a lot of this is still guesswork and we need to impart that. >> it's more like a don't ask-don't tell policy for the media i want to know if there's going to be an attack, likely to come from an invading army or already in the united states

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from some of the mosques, who are the people? if they think there's going to be an attack they must know where it's likely to come from. why aren't we getting reports on that? why koent we get o'keefe or somebody like him to invade some of these places and record what's going on there. >> and we've got the reports, for example, the report about the underwear bomber is now happily talking now that he's been mirandized and he is in fact talking. hats off to mark finkle stein, news buster, making the point it's jeopardizing national security to have this report coming out about him talking now. >> jon: and senator kit bond having a fight with the white house about that and didn't make the list as well. the 12 films on the oscars, some think the avatar and hurt locker. >> we have a population-- >> so what about it? when it comes to how these things get chosen, cal, is that

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a media campaign? is there a certain kind of film that's going to-- >> sure, i subscribe to variety and then you see the, for your consideration ads. full page ads, best actor, best actress, supporting, a real campaign and members of the academy, several hundred of them who get the films they watch them at home or go to a particular theater at a particular time, but look, they all have their particular biases. not just oliver stone, who is the far furthest left maybe of anybody in hollywood. and these are reflected in the films, like "up in the air", for example, anti-business. >> up in the air, how is that liberal. >> i didn't say liberal, anti-business. >> oh and that was a-- >> anti-everything. >> cal, that was a pro marriage, that was pro marriage. at the end of it, here he is, he realizes he's all alone and he has nobody and he should have gotten married. pro marriage, family values. >> let me make a prediction, i think that "hurt locker" will probably win for best picture.

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it's a conservative movie, pro iraq war movie and remind me a lot of deer hunter back in the late '70s, also a sort of a weirdly pro vietnam movie. hollywood during a war hates the war. after the war, they swing arn. i wrote this in the fox forum last week, swing around and say look, we've got to get back in touch with the american people and do a pro troops movie which is what "hurt locker" was. >> jon: when we come back, we will talk about the white house and the iphone. >> the white house has a new app, but what's it really good for? for? find out next on news watch. captioned by closed captioning services, inc. a just , out of the blue at 43. now i'm on an aspirin regimen

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continuing with the effort to side step the press and get the message out. unfiltered the white house launched its first iphone app. >> the new official app puts the latest news from the administration in the palm of your hands. you can read the blog around check out the latest vote and get live video live on your phone. watch frequent web chat or president's speeches like the state of the union. if you want me to see set the white house press corps every day, now there san app. ♪ -- now there is an app.

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>> robert gibbs the white house spokesman. jimmy kimmel mel took a few minutes to do a demo. >> the white house launched the iphone app, it's free and you can download it at itunes. here is how it works, you get two iphones and you just --. [ laughter ] voila, you have obama ears. [ applause ] i feel smarter already. >> here is one of the postings to the white house.gov i-pod app. another day, another disappointing ploy obstructing progress. fair and balance. that is a wrap on news watch this week. i want to thank, kirsten, catholic thomas and alice. i'm jon scott. we'll see you next week for another edition